Significant Changes to Bush-Era Military Commissions Signed Into Law

President Barack Obama signed a bill Wednesday that will change the way military commissions are structured. (Photo: mindgutter / flickr)

President Barack Obama signed a Defense Department spending bill into
law Wednesday, which includes a provision that will change the way
military commissions are structured.

Human rights organizations and legal advocacy groups believe these
controversial Bush-Era commissions primarily deny defendants the
protections that federal caourts provide and have responded with
disappointment to their inclusion in defense legislation by a president
who, during his presidential campaign, was quoted as saying he would
"reject the Military Commissions Act."

The 2010 National Defense Authorization Act allocates $680 billion for
the fiscal year of 2010 to increase military personnel and support the
ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, with a move away from defense
spending on conventional warfare tactics to funding for smaller wars. It
also allows the Pentagon to increase its intelligence services that had
been most recently contracted out to private businesses.

Though the bill has introduced some changes to military commissions: For
the first time, experienced capital defense attorneys will be required
in death penalty cases, more resources have been authorized for defense
counsels and new limitations have been imposed on the use of hearsay and
coerced testimony during trial; critics believe alterations will do
little to limit an inherently unfair practice.

Jameel Jaffer, director of the American Civil Liberties Union National
Security Project, called for the Obama administration to abandon the
"fatally flawed" military commission system. "It will be a shame
if the
law that the president signed today gives new life to the military
commissions. The Obama administration has committed to closing the
prison at Guantanamo, but closing the prison will have little meaning if
the administration leaves in place the policies that the prison has come
to represent."

Under the Military Commissions Act of 2006, defendant were tried in
courts which provided more relaxed rules of evidence, including hearsay,
coerced evidence and secret evidence never shown to the defendant. None
of this data is permitted in US federal civilian court, or in regular US
military courts.

The new bill continues to allow for the conviction of people which the
Constitution and the Geneva Conventions say should not be tried under a
military commission. It also does not prohibit military commission
trials of children, which may place minors in Guantanamo at risk.

According to Daphne Eviatar of the Washington Independent, hundreds of
such cases have been tried and resulted in convictions in federal courts
since 9/11, with eight years of military commissions resulting in three
convictions.

President Obama originally ran on a campaign of criticism of the
commissions, saying that "by any measure our system of trying detainees
has been an enormous failure," and in one of his first acts as president
ordered a 120-day suspension of the tribunals for his staff to review
their procedures. These actions, coupled with Obama's campaign platform
of "change," led many to believe he would take more decisive action.

Vincent Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional
Rights, which has coordinated and organized more than 500 pro bono
lawyers to represent Guantanamo inmates, said Wednesday that "these are
now President Obama's military commissions: he owns them and all of the
problems that come with them, and their inevitable failure will scar his
legacy and embolden our critics in the world. Military commissions are
an unnecessary, jury-rigged creation, second-rate in comparison to our
legal system. Obama is tinkering with the Constitution for no good reason."